Catie Callaghan
04/14/04, 07:28 AM
Sitting down with Dearly Departed did nothing short of reaffirming my faith in the integrity of musicians. They not only express their hearts, they more importantly stay true to them. Dearly Departed is comprised of Mike Mallamo (vocals), Joe Rubino (bass), Ryan Albrecht (guitar), Jeff Bodzer (guitar), and Danny Lopez (drums). I went down to their practice studio to have them tell me what they were all about and I must say I was beyond impressed.
AP.NET: How did you guys form?
Mike: It started with me, Jeff and Ryan with acoustic guitars in my bedroom. Joe had actually contacted me before but because of the distance, I was all the way out in Long Beach and he was in Shirley, it was hard to get things together. We tried once before with a couple of other kids but we weren't so much feeling them. Me and Joe didn't talk for a little while so the three of us started. Jeff actually found Ryan and sought me out as well, and we were looking for a bass player and a drummer… And it seemed obvious so I called Joe back and he brought Danny down, and I’ve known Danny and Joe for a while.
Joe: Actually Ryan found me.
Mike: That's right! At… (indecipherable presumed bar)
Ryan: I was distracting him from my false identification.
AP.NET: How did the totality of the theme, the band name, the album name, the music and vocals, and lyrics come about?
Mike: Actually, Joe came up with the name. We had literally played shows under two or three other names. But Joe actually came up with Dearly Departed. He initially brought it up as a song title.
Danny: We had a list of names, we just didn't feel comfortable with at all.
Mike: We went through periods we just didn't even want to think about a name. We'd talk about it for five minutes and we'd all be like 'forget it.' We probably had the entire EP written, not recorded, before we came up with the name…
Danny: As far as the motif, with the record, and the sound and the band, it just evolved into that. I don't think it was intentional. It was more or less what we derived from our influences… If you noticed there's a big difference from our first EP to the new record.
Mike: I tend to have a slightly more morbid view of things, I guess than most people. My original idea for the record was to do a kind of an introspective thing on kind of a serial killer and everyone else in the band was kind of like 'take it easy.'
AP.NET: I was going to ask you about that, the theme seems to be death through out the record but does it have a more sub-textual meaning?
Mike: Yes, big time. It's not death for the sake of death. It's like a death and re-birth kind of a thing. Everyone in society feels that they have something that should be heard or that they want to be heard but for whatever reason we give a very small percentage of people a chance to say things that can be heard in huge masses and unfortunately a lot of those people use that instrument for the wrong reasons. Then you have people who feel mis-guided, mis-directed, don't get heard for whatever reason and a lot of people take these things to heart. A lot of societies quote, end quote rejects, I don't mean that in an offensive way, but they've been shunned. This is where your socio-paths come from. These are the people who eventually come back to kind of bite you in the ass. That's really what the record is. I guess, at the risk of sounding somewhat ego-maniacal, I'm trying to get in touch and speak to those people who don't have a voice.
AP.NET: Where do you guys draw most of your musical influences from?
Danny: Of course, Joe, he was in Tension, so he listens to a lot of hardcore stuff.
Joe: Not necessarily.
Danny: But, I'm saying in general, when we first started that's where you were coming from.
Ryan: I think what we played in our last band is all different from what we are doing now.
Danny: Yeah, totally. But I think more or less we open ourselves up to each other.
AP.NET: When it comes down to the creative process, writing and working everything together, how do you guys generally go about doing it?
Mike: The best answer is that we don't. We just come in here put on red lights, shut the regular lights off and I mean, Jeff or Ryan, or anybody will literally just make a noise, or a note, or a riff, and everybody just picks it up at their own point and run with it. I will literally sit here in silence and not sing for a couple of practices in a row and just listen to them go and eventually the songs write themselves.
Danny: We inspire each other. Vocally, like he said, he sits there sometimes and the mood of the song might inspire him, spark something in his memory or a particular something or might bring a texture to it where he's like let me write about this. Inspiration is probably the main thing that sparks this band to create.
Mike: I'll put it to you this way: Sometimes when I'm trying to come up with melodies for the songs, I'll be singing gibberish and over time, over practices or a couple of times singing the songs I sub-consciously start forming words over the gibberish. All of a sudden a couple of words or a couple of sentences will come out and I know where to go with the song. So just from listening and playing with the music, it writes its self, it tells me what it’s supposed to be about.
AP.NET: Very cool, that makes it totally from inside of you.
Mike: Totally, I have the easiest job in the world, standing here listening to these guys. I'd listen to them anyway, even if I wasn't in the band.
AP.NET: Are you guys surprised at the recent attention or did you kind of expect it and go with it?
Ryan: I was in such a hole that I would hear things, and be like 'What?' and be like oh, 'that's cool, that's cool.' We didn't even know we made the cover of Long Island Entertainment until after it came out.
Mike: We try to keep the focus here. This is our responsibility. Autographs, interviews, all these things are awesome and it always helps but we wouldn't be doing our job if our focus wasn't here.
Danny: It's not a shock though cause what we're doing is so different than everything else, at least I think so…We're basically, focusing on what we're doing…
Mike: It's also, we don't have to try. Normally when we play shows we're automatically just different. I mean we end up playing with these really heavy bands or these rock type bands and we don't really succumb to any one style consistently. It's easy for us to stand out and I guess that's a lucky thing for us because that's the easiest way. I mean if you've got four guys standing next to you, three of them wearing suits and the other guy's wearing a clown suit, which guy are you going to look at?
AP.NET: My next question is sort of about that.
Mike: Clown suits? I love questions about clown suits.
AP.NET: Haha, no, but the mood you guys generally induce in the crowd is much different than who you take the stage with. Do you find a difference in crowd reception between local shows where it's become familiar that you guys are going to be different than what's on stage and shows played out of the area?
Ryan: Playing here I think we're finally at that level where we're comfortable enough to know that the place might be half filled with people that we expect to be there at this point. A factor of having played here for almost three full years now to where we actually have somewhat of a draw. So we don't have to worry about that here anymore but out of state, definitely. We've played straight metal shows, like ridiculous mind-boggling metal and pop-punk and other things. People receive that a little differently I guess because people go to specific shows that are maybe more type-hooked.
AP.NET: How do you find they receive it though? Is it welcoming?
Danny: We've had reviews where they were like, and "Dearly Departed took the stage and what was that?" We don't take it as an insult we take it like alright, well we were noticed.
Mike: You'll catch up to us whenever you want.
Danny: Either you get it or you don't.
Mike: We played with a couple of heavier bands in New Jersey and I felt like we couldn't get off the stage fast enough. You look in the crowd and people have such a serious look on their face sometimes because we're so different from what's going on that how your received isn't whether they liked or not it's a matter of whether or not they are able to get used to it now or later. Like I said when we couldn't get off the stage, I felt, fast enough yet when I'm standing at the merch table probably twenty or thirty kids came by me and Joe and were like, "You guys were awesome, when are you playing again?, Where in New York are you from?" Which is awesome. So initial crowd reaction, of course, if you're playing in heavier bands or whatever, kids running around moshin', beatin' the crap out of each other, you know your well recepted but you can't do that with our music. It's hard to dance to; it's hard to mosh to.
Joe: Plus if there's a hundred people in the room you're going to touch at least two.
Danny: We hope it's kinda like rain where it will eventually sink in and soften up and people will just accept it.
AP.NET: Do you guys think the reputation of Long Island's concentration on a particular style of music has caste you guys into a certain misconceived label? Do you think they expect something out of you guys because you are from where you're from?
Joe: Definately not emo. And none of us really are. Mike came from an emo band but that's about it.
Mike: I don't know, especially locally, I don't know if that stuff has much merit anymore. I think, like you said before, people have come to expect a certain thing from us. There was a record label, and because of Taking Back Sunday, and us being friends with them, they came to check us out a few times and we were not what they expected. That was about two years ago and since then I don't think it's hurt us in any way. I think, especially locally, we've done this enough times to where people stop coming to shows being like, "I wonder if they're going to rock harder this time, or I wonder if they're going to be popular, or heavier this time." We are what we are.
AP.NET: As a band, are there specific shared experiences that stand out as either the best or the worst?
Mike: Jeff always says something that I think is pretty dead on. I mean there's nobody in the world that walks around 100% happy all the time, there's always angst, there's always fits of depression. And this is the way the five of us have chosen to bring that out, through this music. So I think that experience in itself is the common bond between all of us. Even though the four of them aren't saying any words, I feel what they play. Which is why it's easy for me to write lyrics because, even if I don't know exactly what they're expressing, I know that they're trying to express something through the music.
AP.NET:What do you guys hope the most, people get out of your music?
Danny: Probably a release, for them to feel something. Even if it's anger or confusion or happiness or something just to touch them or maybe grab them for a few seconds or five minutes and then walk away and say, "Wow I felt something. I don’t know what is." And maybe, eventually they'll find out what it is. Stir up the pot a little. I think that's pretty clear, to stir the person. I think the arts should stir people. People put paintings in front of you, they do it for a reason, for you to look at and go, "Alright, how do I feel about this?" Either A: I hate it or B: I don't hate it I like it. I guess by making that decision that's what the artist accomplishes. To find out who you are is an accomplishment.
Mike: A lot of times people look to detach themselves from reality whether it be through drugs or alcohol or whatever else they choose. I think we feel running away from your emotions, or ignoring your emotions, that's not the way we choose to do things. We enjoy wrapping ourselves up in what we do and what we feel. I think in the end even if you wrap yourself up in a somewhat morbid situation, or maybe something you're a little bit uncomfortable with, you're better off dealing with it. I hope that people come to our shows and listen to what we say and listen to the music and kinda feel that in some ways, like he said, were able to release something that's been on their shoulders. Ignoring anything never makes it go away. We hope that our music makes it a little more comfortable for them.
Jeff: Whenever we're writing something, working on something or playing something we just finished it's like all of a sudden we're done with it and we want to keep playing it and all of a sudden it feels really good to play something new. It's almost like out of nowhere you get this light at the end of the tunnel and you want to do something else now. It's like it’s bringing you out of a depression or whatever else you were thinking about. So usually at a show when someone comes up to you and they share that with you, they shared the same thing without even discussing it.
Mike: Like you know you've made that connection, which is amazing. It's exactly what music should be.
Joe: Or you have angry Tension fans with baseball bats.
AP.NET:Would each of you guys mind sharing what you've gotten out of being in the band, personally?
Jeff: Definitely, before I ever played in any band or this band too, when I first started playing music I didn't know what I was doing and now I know what I want to do. And I feel that everyone else knows now too and we all come up on our own and discuss it. For one, it helps me speak better, inside and outside. I can go anywhere with the rest of the four guys and not worry about things that I used to worry about. I can always just go out and write or communicate and feel confident about what I am doing. That's one thing I could never do before.
Ryan: I definitely got a lot better at guitar cause of you guys. When they met me I was pretty terrible, if you ask me. I’m the youngest, I'm only twenty-two, we won't get into theirs… I wasn't even in high school by the time you guys graduated is my point. I learned a lot from them, how to grow up. They helped me grow up a lot more; they helped me find responsibility and stuff like that. The music feels good as far as that goes but as far as everything else… The personal gains were probably even better than the musical ones.
Danny: I think through out the course of my life, I have struggled to try and find an easy way of communication with people, a different medium rather than the English vocabulary. And I think I found that with music. Especially with these guys because of course growing up I had problems trying to get out what I'm trying to say or how I feel of course with everything you go through with in life. But know that I'm an adult, as Ryan so put it, it's amazing. There's connections that you try and make, I think a lot of the human condition is trying to figure out or trying to define 'what, where, why' and stuff like that. And the only thing we have are these imperial senses, and then you have subjectivity which comes into play. We're all points on this huge fabric of space, so we don't experience the same things, not to get deep or anything, but I have these four individuals who experienced different things in other towns, other territories and then come together and I try to communicate my version of life with them and vice versa and I think music itself finds that common thread, the next level of communicating with each other, rather than the English vocabulary.
Mike: Music to me, has always been a way to communicate. I don't think people interact with each other enough as it is. I know ever since I was a little kid, listening to the music of my parents, your going to make fun of me, but a lot of folky stuff like James Taylor, John Denver, and Paul Simon. Those guys always seemed to have some sort of confessional nature about them. After that, strangely enough, the first music I ever chose to listen to on my own was hip-hop and at that point hip-hop was not a mainstream thing but again I was thrust into an arena where people only spoke of what they felt, what they saw around them and it was obviously honest to me. I felt that if I was gonna ever do something musically, which I knew I always wanted to do, I'd have to be honest. Being in this band, I think we've all had personal issues at one time or another and now here we are, and the five of us, as Jeff said, we can go anywhere and do anything with each other. We trust each other, I have four life-long friends and as far as sharing a stage or putting something down on a record I completely trust everything they do, because I know it’s honest. I know every single one of them plays from the heart and it makes it a completely comfortable situation for me and above it all I guess I’ll live a dream. Because being completely consumed by music since I was old enough to understand music, no matter how big or small it winds up being in the end, at least I got to contribute something. So when someone comes up to us after a show, like Jeff said before, and says that we've made a connection then we're obviously doing our job…
Danny: We're definitely being included musically, ten years from now, I'm sure…
Joe: I get to go see places I would normally never get to see. I get to travel. I met these two clowns again, who I probably wouldn't have talked to again if it hadn't been for this band. Not that we hated each other, we just never saw each other. It's cool, you meet people, you travel.
Mike: You get to have a conversation with hundreds of people at a time. The last tour we went on for two weeks down the east coast and back up, we probably played in front of at least a thousand kids in those two weeks. Who do you know gets to speak to over a thousand people in two weeks? And a lot of them attempt to keep in contact whether its just little notes on our message board on the website, we've made enough of a connection where they feel it's necessary to take five minutes out of their day to say what's up. You can't beat that.
You can check out Dearly Departed at dearlydepartedmusic.com (http://dearlydepartedmusic.com/cover.html)
You can also stream their latest record, Believing in Ghosts at onedaysavior.com (http://onedaysavior.com/dearlydeparted/)
which is also available at the onedaysavior online store.
AP.NET: How did you guys form?
Mike: It started with me, Jeff and Ryan with acoustic guitars in my bedroom. Joe had actually contacted me before but because of the distance, I was all the way out in Long Beach and he was in Shirley, it was hard to get things together. We tried once before with a couple of other kids but we weren't so much feeling them. Me and Joe didn't talk for a little while so the three of us started. Jeff actually found Ryan and sought me out as well, and we were looking for a bass player and a drummer… And it seemed obvious so I called Joe back and he brought Danny down, and I’ve known Danny and Joe for a while.
Joe: Actually Ryan found me.
Mike: That's right! At… (indecipherable presumed bar)
Ryan: I was distracting him from my false identification.
AP.NET: How did the totality of the theme, the band name, the album name, the music and vocals, and lyrics come about?
Mike: Actually, Joe came up with the name. We had literally played shows under two or three other names. But Joe actually came up with Dearly Departed. He initially brought it up as a song title.
Danny: We had a list of names, we just didn't feel comfortable with at all.
Mike: We went through periods we just didn't even want to think about a name. We'd talk about it for five minutes and we'd all be like 'forget it.' We probably had the entire EP written, not recorded, before we came up with the name…
Danny: As far as the motif, with the record, and the sound and the band, it just evolved into that. I don't think it was intentional. It was more or less what we derived from our influences… If you noticed there's a big difference from our first EP to the new record.
Mike: I tend to have a slightly more morbid view of things, I guess than most people. My original idea for the record was to do a kind of an introspective thing on kind of a serial killer and everyone else in the band was kind of like 'take it easy.'
AP.NET: I was going to ask you about that, the theme seems to be death through out the record but does it have a more sub-textual meaning?
Mike: Yes, big time. It's not death for the sake of death. It's like a death and re-birth kind of a thing. Everyone in society feels that they have something that should be heard or that they want to be heard but for whatever reason we give a very small percentage of people a chance to say things that can be heard in huge masses and unfortunately a lot of those people use that instrument for the wrong reasons. Then you have people who feel mis-guided, mis-directed, don't get heard for whatever reason and a lot of people take these things to heart. A lot of societies quote, end quote rejects, I don't mean that in an offensive way, but they've been shunned. This is where your socio-paths come from. These are the people who eventually come back to kind of bite you in the ass. That's really what the record is. I guess, at the risk of sounding somewhat ego-maniacal, I'm trying to get in touch and speak to those people who don't have a voice.
AP.NET: Where do you guys draw most of your musical influences from?
Danny: Of course, Joe, he was in Tension, so he listens to a lot of hardcore stuff.
Joe: Not necessarily.
Danny: But, I'm saying in general, when we first started that's where you were coming from.
Ryan: I think what we played in our last band is all different from what we are doing now.
Danny: Yeah, totally. But I think more or less we open ourselves up to each other.
AP.NET: When it comes down to the creative process, writing and working everything together, how do you guys generally go about doing it?
Mike: The best answer is that we don't. We just come in here put on red lights, shut the regular lights off and I mean, Jeff or Ryan, or anybody will literally just make a noise, or a note, or a riff, and everybody just picks it up at their own point and run with it. I will literally sit here in silence and not sing for a couple of practices in a row and just listen to them go and eventually the songs write themselves.
Danny: We inspire each other. Vocally, like he said, he sits there sometimes and the mood of the song might inspire him, spark something in his memory or a particular something or might bring a texture to it where he's like let me write about this. Inspiration is probably the main thing that sparks this band to create.
Mike: I'll put it to you this way: Sometimes when I'm trying to come up with melodies for the songs, I'll be singing gibberish and over time, over practices or a couple of times singing the songs I sub-consciously start forming words over the gibberish. All of a sudden a couple of words or a couple of sentences will come out and I know where to go with the song. So just from listening and playing with the music, it writes its self, it tells me what it’s supposed to be about.
AP.NET: Very cool, that makes it totally from inside of you.
Mike: Totally, I have the easiest job in the world, standing here listening to these guys. I'd listen to them anyway, even if I wasn't in the band.
AP.NET: Are you guys surprised at the recent attention or did you kind of expect it and go with it?
Ryan: I was in such a hole that I would hear things, and be like 'What?' and be like oh, 'that's cool, that's cool.' We didn't even know we made the cover of Long Island Entertainment until after it came out.
Mike: We try to keep the focus here. This is our responsibility. Autographs, interviews, all these things are awesome and it always helps but we wouldn't be doing our job if our focus wasn't here.
Danny: It's not a shock though cause what we're doing is so different than everything else, at least I think so…We're basically, focusing on what we're doing…
Mike: It's also, we don't have to try. Normally when we play shows we're automatically just different. I mean we end up playing with these really heavy bands or these rock type bands and we don't really succumb to any one style consistently. It's easy for us to stand out and I guess that's a lucky thing for us because that's the easiest way. I mean if you've got four guys standing next to you, three of them wearing suits and the other guy's wearing a clown suit, which guy are you going to look at?
AP.NET: My next question is sort of about that.
Mike: Clown suits? I love questions about clown suits.
AP.NET: Haha, no, but the mood you guys generally induce in the crowd is much different than who you take the stage with. Do you find a difference in crowd reception between local shows where it's become familiar that you guys are going to be different than what's on stage and shows played out of the area?
Ryan: Playing here I think we're finally at that level where we're comfortable enough to know that the place might be half filled with people that we expect to be there at this point. A factor of having played here for almost three full years now to where we actually have somewhat of a draw. So we don't have to worry about that here anymore but out of state, definitely. We've played straight metal shows, like ridiculous mind-boggling metal and pop-punk and other things. People receive that a little differently I guess because people go to specific shows that are maybe more type-hooked.
AP.NET: How do you find they receive it though? Is it welcoming?
Danny: We've had reviews where they were like, and "Dearly Departed took the stage and what was that?" We don't take it as an insult we take it like alright, well we were noticed.
Mike: You'll catch up to us whenever you want.
Danny: Either you get it or you don't.
Mike: We played with a couple of heavier bands in New Jersey and I felt like we couldn't get off the stage fast enough. You look in the crowd and people have such a serious look on their face sometimes because we're so different from what's going on that how your received isn't whether they liked or not it's a matter of whether or not they are able to get used to it now or later. Like I said when we couldn't get off the stage, I felt, fast enough yet when I'm standing at the merch table probably twenty or thirty kids came by me and Joe and were like, "You guys were awesome, when are you playing again?, Where in New York are you from?" Which is awesome. So initial crowd reaction, of course, if you're playing in heavier bands or whatever, kids running around moshin', beatin' the crap out of each other, you know your well recepted but you can't do that with our music. It's hard to dance to; it's hard to mosh to.
Joe: Plus if there's a hundred people in the room you're going to touch at least two.
Danny: We hope it's kinda like rain where it will eventually sink in and soften up and people will just accept it.
AP.NET: Do you guys think the reputation of Long Island's concentration on a particular style of music has caste you guys into a certain misconceived label? Do you think they expect something out of you guys because you are from where you're from?
Joe: Definately not emo. And none of us really are. Mike came from an emo band but that's about it.
Mike: I don't know, especially locally, I don't know if that stuff has much merit anymore. I think, like you said before, people have come to expect a certain thing from us. There was a record label, and because of Taking Back Sunday, and us being friends with them, they came to check us out a few times and we were not what they expected. That was about two years ago and since then I don't think it's hurt us in any way. I think, especially locally, we've done this enough times to where people stop coming to shows being like, "I wonder if they're going to rock harder this time, or I wonder if they're going to be popular, or heavier this time." We are what we are.
AP.NET: As a band, are there specific shared experiences that stand out as either the best or the worst?
Mike: Jeff always says something that I think is pretty dead on. I mean there's nobody in the world that walks around 100% happy all the time, there's always angst, there's always fits of depression. And this is the way the five of us have chosen to bring that out, through this music. So I think that experience in itself is the common bond between all of us. Even though the four of them aren't saying any words, I feel what they play. Which is why it's easy for me to write lyrics because, even if I don't know exactly what they're expressing, I know that they're trying to express something through the music.
AP.NET:What do you guys hope the most, people get out of your music?
Danny: Probably a release, for them to feel something. Even if it's anger or confusion or happiness or something just to touch them or maybe grab them for a few seconds or five minutes and then walk away and say, "Wow I felt something. I don’t know what is." And maybe, eventually they'll find out what it is. Stir up the pot a little. I think that's pretty clear, to stir the person. I think the arts should stir people. People put paintings in front of you, they do it for a reason, for you to look at and go, "Alright, how do I feel about this?" Either A: I hate it or B: I don't hate it I like it. I guess by making that decision that's what the artist accomplishes. To find out who you are is an accomplishment.
Mike: A lot of times people look to detach themselves from reality whether it be through drugs or alcohol or whatever else they choose. I think we feel running away from your emotions, or ignoring your emotions, that's not the way we choose to do things. We enjoy wrapping ourselves up in what we do and what we feel. I think in the end even if you wrap yourself up in a somewhat morbid situation, or maybe something you're a little bit uncomfortable with, you're better off dealing with it. I hope that people come to our shows and listen to what we say and listen to the music and kinda feel that in some ways, like he said, were able to release something that's been on their shoulders. Ignoring anything never makes it go away. We hope that our music makes it a little more comfortable for them.
Jeff: Whenever we're writing something, working on something or playing something we just finished it's like all of a sudden we're done with it and we want to keep playing it and all of a sudden it feels really good to play something new. It's almost like out of nowhere you get this light at the end of the tunnel and you want to do something else now. It's like it’s bringing you out of a depression or whatever else you were thinking about. So usually at a show when someone comes up to you and they share that with you, they shared the same thing without even discussing it.
Mike: Like you know you've made that connection, which is amazing. It's exactly what music should be.
Joe: Or you have angry Tension fans with baseball bats.
AP.NET:Would each of you guys mind sharing what you've gotten out of being in the band, personally?
Jeff: Definitely, before I ever played in any band or this band too, when I first started playing music I didn't know what I was doing and now I know what I want to do. And I feel that everyone else knows now too and we all come up on our own and discuss it. For one, it helps me speak better, inside and outside. I can go anywhere with the rest of the four guys and not worry about things that I used to worry about. I can always just go out and write or communicate and feel confident about what I am doing. That's one thing I could never do before.
Ryan: I definitely got a lot better at guitar cause of you guys. When they met me I was pretty terrible, if you ask me. I’m the youngest, I'm only twenty-two, we won't get into theirs… I wasn't even in high school by the time you guys graduated is my point. I learned a lot from them, how to grow up. They helped me grow up a lot more; they helped me find responsibility and stuff like that. The music feels good as far as that goes but as far as everything else… The personal gains were probably even better than the musical ones.
Danny: I think through out the course of my life, I have struggled to try and find an easy way of communication with people, a different medium rather than the English vocabulary. And I think I found that with music. Especially with these guys because of course growing up I had problems trying to get out what I'm trying to say or how I feel of course with everything you go through with in life. But know that I'm an adult, as Ryan so put it, it's amazing. There's connections that you try and make, I think a lot of the human condition is trying to figure out or trying to define 'what, where, why' and stuff like that. And the only thing we have are these imperial senses, and then you have subjectivity which comes into play. We're all points on this huge fabric of space, so we don't experience the same things, not to get deep or anything, but I have these four individuals who experienced different things in other towns, other territories and then come together and I try to communicate my version of life with them and vice versa and I think music itself finds that common thread, the next level of communicating with each other, rather than the English vocabulary.
Mike: Music to me, has always been a way to communicate. I don't think people interact with each other enough as it is. I know ever since I was a little kid, listening to the music of my parents, your going to make fun of me, but a lot of folky stuff like James Taylor, John Denver, and Paul Simon. Those guys always seemed to have some sort of confessional nature about them. After that, strangely enough, the first music I ever chose to listen to on my own was hip-hop and at that point hip-hop was not a mainstream thing but again I was thrust into an arena where people only spoke of what they felt, what they saw around them and it was obviously honest to me. I felt that if I was gonna ever do something musically, which I knew I always wanted to do, I'd have to be honest. Being in this band, I think we've all had personal issues at one time or another and now here we are, and the five of us, as Jeff said, we can go anywhere and do anything with each other. We trust each other, I have four life-long friends and as far as sharing a stage or putting something down on a record I completely trust everything they do, because I know it’s honest. I know every single one of them plays from the heart and it makes it a completely comfortable situation for me and above it all I guess I’ll live a dream. Because being completely consumed by music since I was old enough to understand music, no matter how big or small it winds up being in the end, at least I got to contribute something. So when someone comes up to us after a show, like Jeff said before, and says that we've made a connection then we're obviously doing our job…
Danny: We're definitely being included musically, ten years from now, I'm sure…
Joe: I get to go see places I would normally never get to see. I get to travel. I met these two clowns again, who I probably wouldn't have talked to again if it hadn't been for this band. Not that we hated each other, we just never saw each other. It's cool, you meet people, you travel.
Mike: You get to have a conversation with hundreds of people at a time. The last tour we went on for two weeks down the east coast and back up, we probably played in front of at least a thousand kids in those two weeks. Who do you know gets to speak to over a thousand people in two weeks? And a lot of them attempt to keep in contact whether its just little notes on our message board on the website, we've made enough of a connection where they feel it's necessary to take five minutes out of their day to say what's up. You can't beat that.
You can check out Dearly Departed at dearlydepartedmusic.com (http://dearlydepartedmusic.com/cover.html)
You can also stream their latest record, Believing in Ghosts at onedaysavior.com (http://onedaysavior.com/dearlydeparted/)
which is also available at the onedaysavior online store.